Terance Mann looks like a rotation-level player
It was an incredibly small sample size, but Terance Mann came into Wednesday night’s game and immediately started to make plays for the LA Clippers.
By night’s end, the 23-year-old rookie had racked up four points and five assists in 10 minutes of play — most of which came when Utah’s best players were on the floor.
It was more of the same of what we’ve seen from Mann, who has stolen the show just about every time he’s made his way onto the floor. From Summer League to preseason and now to the full-blown NBA, he’s been impressive.
That alone should be enough to earn him a permanent spot in the rotation. And if it doesn’t make sense to play him all the time, he should at least see some considerable minutes in load management games, like the ones played last night.
One of the Clippers’ main problems throughout the night was creating on offense — LA had a difficult time getting good, valuable shots up, and their high number of turnovers (19) shows that they may have been forcing things to get some more points on the board.
Mann has already shown that he can be a potential solution to that issue. For someone who didn’t play point guard in college, the swingman has excellent vision and is constantly making impressive passes to set his teammates up for good looks. Starting him in load management games, especially against lesser teams, might not be a bad idea moving forward.
If nothing else, Mann certainly deserves more minutes than Jerome Robinson, and perhaps even Rodney McGruder while he works his way back to the floor.